Mediocrity in Somerville

Last weekend The Allston Gardener came over to my house and saw my Somerville garden with her own eyes. Jean was generous with her compliments (did not gouge out her eyes) and reminded me that I hadn't posted any updates. At all.

It's true. Mostly true because my garden is vexing me (reasons include but are not limited to: rot, weeds, earwigs, parching, overgrowth, unexplained death, shiftlessness) and partly true because my kids freak out when I use the computer. Freak out like I am tasing them, but tasing them with neglect. But nevertheless, here are updates!

pots

The pots continue looking good, and I don't know why. I can put flowers and plants in a tub of dirt and let them do their thing all summer. Sure, I'll water them. Sometimes I'll yank the withering blooms off of a dahlia plant and toss them into the pot. Nothing more. They grow and grow; it's the pots. When I yank a withering dahlia off of a plant in the ground, it disintegrates in my hand and I find my arm up to my elbow awash in earwigs. (True story. And yet somehow I survived to tell the tale.) The pots endure the ministrations of my daughter, who has a fondness for jamming sticks into the dirt around the roots and yelling, "Oh, no! Oh! NO!"

Oh, no.

I suppose it's possible that it's some sort of black magic, but if it were I'd imagine she'd have done the same thing with her garden pots. These she dotes on in a style I like to call Extreme Neglect. Some time ago, after I'd decided that I had planted seeds for the last time (Garden 3.0) I gave Olive the box filled with seeds and seed packets, two planters and a trowel. She dumped a few handfuls of whatever in one pot and a single seed potato in the other (coincidence? genius? boredom? rudimentary listening skills?) and then covered them with some handfuls of dirt and sprayed herself with the hose. (Nix genius.) When the seedlings sprouted, and there were a real crowd of them, we were all very eager to find out what they were. Apparently she planted around 40 heads of bibb lettuce, eight carrots, a beanstalk and a single pea shoot. She was not interested in thinning the seedlings, save for the beanstalk which she eventually pulled out and threw into stick pile with a hearty "Oh, NO!" She has watered the pots a few times. She has stood over them and yelled "Look!" and "Happy!" And that stuff is producing. Her lettuces go into sandwiches. Even the poor crowded pea has produced pods for eating.

Olive's Pots, assorted and potato

The Big Garden has peas, too, but inch for inch and sweaty brow for sweaty brow, it's nowhere near as successful. And as much as I doubted Olive's "no thinning" policy, I seem to be standing by while my cucumbers attempt to destroy the world. Before planting I consulted the internet about how many of each plant would thrive in a square foot without burdening its neighbors. I did this in part because I didn't know enough to make an informed decision, but mostly because I hate being wrong. If things go awry, I can take petty solace in the fact that it wasn't my idea. At any rate, the Gardener's Supply planning tool recommended two cucumber plants per square foot. I respectfully suggest that they are wrong. And I am too busy removing cucumber tendrils from the gasping throats of all local flora to enjoy my petty solace. On the other hand, I have been enjoying practicing pickling in anticipation of our gigantic cucumber surplus. (File under: D for delusional. Or depressing.)

angry cukes, too big to fail

I also can't seem to thin the weeds. Or the roses. Or the pernicious morning glories (night stranglers.) It could be that I'm not trying because it's been 45 billion degrees out for the past month. (We've had a couple of pretty warm days.) Or that I'm not trying because I'm super busy hanging out by the kiddie pool. (Am lifeguard.) Or that I'm not trying because all of the wrong things love to grow in my yard, and all of the right things demand gallons of fertilizer (which, tragically, is also a real steroid bath for the previously mentioned "wrong things.")

you know where you are? you're in the jungle, baby.

By the way, it was tremendously difficult to get a picture of this vegetable garden without somehow featuring the World’s Saddest Hot Tub. This hot tub is the ruination of our yard: an eyesore indicative of a lifestyle I do not embrace, it has eaten up loads of valuable real estate since day one. We are marginally hopeful that a man named Harmonica Pete will come and take it away this weekend. Because he has flaked on us before (and because he calls himself Harmonica Pete) I am tempering my excitement.

get thee behind me, hot tub.

This photo magic is also true of the lawn. Just as my husband will artfully avoid getting me in the frame when taking pictures of the kids, when I’m taking pictures of the yard it’s at angles and in snippets in a constant effort to keep from capturing the lawn. It’s not coldhearted. We love our lawn. We need it for fun and to play and to run around on. The lawn is awesome. But if you want a shot that celebrates the lush and verdant glory of your garden, you don’t want it marred by something, well… comparably haggard. Maybe next time I will devote an entire post to photos and tales of our grass.

Probably not, though.